Inverse Design of Turbine Components

Description

Computational Fluid dynamics has become a fundamental tool for the simulation of flow devices such as diffusers, blade rows, etc. CFD is however still not being exploited as one would expect in the design process. In fact the 'trial and error' approach is the most used by designers.

In the Inverse Methods one would like to design devices by imposing, for example, the distribution of the pressure or the flow speed as boundary conditions and looking for the corresponding geometry. Towards this goal J.J. Keller developed the Inverse Euler Equations (ZAMP, 49 (1998)).

In this project we developed a code which can handle 2D and axis-symmetric flows in both cases of a direct and inverse computation.

Our current research consists in extending the our method to three dimensional as well as transonic flows.

In collaboration with:

• ALSTOM Power (Switzerland) Ltd. and the Kommision für Technologie and Innovation KTI

Contacts

Prof. Rolf Jeltsch and Andreas Troxler.